To NewVoice Sis
--Some thoughts on recent reading and life in general
I didn't know your birthday (I still don't, shame on me!) but recently the thought dawned on me that you must have just turned 50. I had wondered how it felt. I had wondered whether that was what you meant when you told me you were going through something at some point last year. But I didn't ask because I felt it might not be a topic you were so keen on and I didn't want to intrude. Also because I knew you would share when you wanted to.
As your younger sister, I dare not say: I can imagine. Don't worry. 60 is the new 40. Those are all cold-hearted clichés because I can't imagine; being worried can be a good thing as it gives you a new perspective, and finally, let's be honest: 60 is 60. 50 is 50. Playing game on numbers doesn't really make it any better. It would only make me look like a fool that knows nothing about aging (which I probably am. :)). But I do have something to share:
Last month when I had the car accident, when I was holding my son in the rain, watching my car being towed at that intersection, I suddenly remembered what Anna Quindlen said about her moment when her life was cut into: "before" and "after". I thought to myself, is this a moment that will cut my life into "before" and "after"? As it turned out, no, not really. That accident wasn't so bad and you knew what happened afterwards. But that accident taught me a lot. One of the lessons is to value each moment of my life, to live in the present, because you don't know what the next moment is going to bring you.
Reading the Hours taught me many things too, one of which is that it is OK to be ordinary. You don't have to have a life full of dramatic events, grand themes, fame and fortune to live a full life. Each hour you have might be just the same as that of someone famous, someone you admire, like Virginia Woolf. Everyone is facing the same challenges in his/her own life and each one of us has our own enemies to defeat, our own fears to overcome, our own happiness to obtain and our own issues to work on, even though we may live in different centuries, in different countries, under very different circumstances. Every hour can change your life. Every moment can be your moment of enlightenment and can divide your life into "before" and "after" if you choose to.
Another inspiration came from reading the prologue of P. D. James' autobiography. On the eve of her 77th birthday, P. D. James embarked on the journey of writing her autobiography in the format of a year’s diary. She wrote: "Will I persist with this effort? Only time will tell. And will I be here at the end of the year? At seventy-seven that is not an irrational question. But then is it irrational at any age? In youth we go forward caparisoned in immortality; it is only, I think, in age that we fully realize the transitoriness of life." Will we be here at the end of the year? Will we be here tomorrow? These are rational questions at any age. When we were young, we didn’t think much about mortality. We took life for granted. Only when we hear the biological clock ticking do we start thinking about it.
I once saw an analogy that compares the survival rate of human being to the bathtub curve (this one below seems to be close enough to what I saw).
Statistically, infancy and gerontic age have the highest mortality rate. Infants and seniors are more at the mercy of fatal diseases. This is more of the trend of natural death. But when it comes to each individual of us, statistics really doesn’t say much. When you appear at the wrong time at the wrong place, accident could happen to you. The probability of its occurance is equal for everyone. The recent two incidences of shooting and the mysterious death of the Canadian traveller in Southern California, and the shooting rampage in Connecticut and Colorado last year, make me shutter and lament the fragility of life. At the same time, they make me appreciate life more and appreciate what I have because both can be gone at any minute. As Anna Quindlen said, knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.
Let's learn to love the journey, not to dwell too much on the past and not to worry too much about the destination.
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